HP Kills Windows 7 Slate

Looks like HP's desire to make a webOS Tablet is deadly-serious. According to a source who has briefed TechCrunch, HP has killed the project and won't be releasing their Windows 7-based Slate.

It's important to note that any webOS-based tablet is likely going to be a long ways off - hardware takes much longer to develop than most people realize and given both Palm and HP's dedication to tightly integrating hardware and software, you can be sure that they're not just going to slap webOS in its current incarnation on a slate device just to get it out the door.

We're optimistic, though. We strongly suspect that Palm has always intended to get webOS on a tablet device - they just needed to make a beachhead in the smartphone space first. When they first unveiled webOS back in January, Palm insisted that this platform would be around for "ten years" and they knew how to grow it. Palm has made the same statement many times since then. For all we know, Palm already has a plan for exactly what they think webOS on a tablet should look like - they just lacked the resources to make good on that vision. With HP in the picture, that's not really a problem anymore.